ATHENS, Alabama -- Al Stephens has a hard time keeping his
hands still.Most days, he puts them to work in the blacksmith shop behind his house here in rural northern Alabama, practicing an ancient profession.

He heats, hammers, bends and buffs bars of steel into candle holders, pizza cutters, veggie choppers and other household items that are sold in stores across the nation.

But even when he's not working, his hands are.

He always has a small piece of modeling clay within reach, and while he's watching TV at night, he's constantly kneading it and planning future creations.

"Working with steel is just like working with playdough," said Stephens, who's been a full-time blacksmith for more than 20 years. "All I'm doing is squeezing it into a different shape. The only limits that I have are my imagination."

His imagination is what drives his business, Pequea Valley Forge, which sells hand-crafted iron work to stores in 41 states. Stephens started the business in Pennsylvania, but he and his wife, Sylvia, moved to Alabama nearly eight years ago to be closer to her parents.

His products start as bars of steel that he cuts down to a manageable size.

"Then it's just a matter of using tools blacksmiths have used since the dawn of time," Stephens said. "I heat it up and I hit it."

Inside his shop, there's a propane-fueled forge, where he heats the bars to temperatures ranging from 1,800 to 2,000 degrees. Then he starts the drawing process, hammering away at the steel as it bends beneath the blows.

There are multiple trips back to the forge for more heat before Stephens is satisfied with the shape of whatever he's making. Then comes the smoothing with a wire wheel, cleaning in a mildly acidic bath and another stop in the forge to darken the piece to his preferred shade of "hot steel blue."

There's also welding and additional hammering against one of the century-old anvils that dot the work space.

Even on cold days, he sweats as he works with the hot metal, which is one reason he keeps the shop doors open.

Stephens said he has always liked to work with his hands.

As a boy growing up in Missouri, he built everything from airplanes to tree houses. Later on, his interest turned to metal, and he worked as a machinist.

He got hooked on blacksmithing in the 1980s when he started volunteering at a historical site in Illinois, and he turned his hobby into a career in 1992 when he went to work for a Pennsylvania company that specialized in Colonial reproduction hardware.

Stephens later started his own business after purchasing part of his product line from his mentor, Doug Hendrickson.

None of his products are identical, which is the nature of handmade pieces, he said.

"The individual hammer marks make the light bounce off of them," he said.

In Alabama, Pequea Valley Forge products are sold at Alabama Goods in Homewood, Harrison Brothers Hardware in Huntsville and the Birmingham Museum of Art. The kitchen utensils at Alabama Goods range in price from $27 to $37.

Fewer and fewer people are making a living as blacksmiths these days, Stephens said. For example, a wholesale show he attends every year now draws just two blacksmiths, compared to a dozen in the early days of his business.

And that's not surprising, he added. Metal work is highly automated now, and a blacksmith shop isn't an ideal working environment for everyone.

"It's hot, dirty, noisy and everything in here will cut you
or smash you or do some kind of damage, and there's very few people who want to
do that anymore," he said.

So why does Stephens, who's smashed a few of his own fingers over the years, do it?

"I spent a lot of years in factories where I couldn't see
the outside world," he said. "I like working by myself and with the doors open."

Alabama-made is a regular al.com feature about the state's homegrown products and businesses.